‘There was a great explosion,’ he said, when Alex recovered consciousness several days later. ‘There were bits of gun, limbs and flesh flying everywhere. You were flung ten metres into the air like a rag doll. And then it all went quiet. I crept out to look. I did not expect to find you breathing, but you were. All the gun crew were dead. Such heroism could not be allowed to perish. I carried you home.’

Iosef was a peasant who lived with his aged mother in an izba a few versts outside Minsk. He was big and strong but lacking in wit and that had somehow saved him from conscription into the Red Army. How they lived Alex had no idea, being only half-conscious at the time and unable to walk on account of a broken leg, not to mention a lump the size of a chicken’s egg on the back of his head. The Russians’ scorched-earth policy meant that nothing was left for them to live on. When the Germans threatened to overrun the area, he had carried his mother and then Alex into the nearby forest where they met other Russians, civilians and troops who were determined not to fall into German hands. It was an area of mixed forests and swamps, often hidden in mist and fog, an ideal habitat for partisans. Iosef, who was not as simple as he appeared, told him they stole food, rifles and ammunition from the Germans. ‘We are causing them no end of inconvenience,’ he had said with a chuckle.

It was inevitable that they would be rounded up in the end. Many of the partisans had been shot on the spot; the injured were left to die by the roadside, while those who were able to walk had been herded like cattle along the road to Germany. They were given no food, no shelter and very little rest. Alex, hobbling painfully, had been supported by Iosef and another of their number. ‘We saved you before, we are not going to let you die now,’ he had said. His mother had died a few weeks before and he clung to keeping Alex alive as a sort of compensation. The fact that he had never been a soldier and could not truthfully be termed a prisoner of war was not taken into consideration; he was between fifteen and sixty-five and therefore of military age.

That first camp had been nothing but a field surrounded by barbed wire. There were no huts and they were left to try and make themselves what shelter they could with whatever materials came to hand: brushwood, old posts, bits of clothing and ragged blankets. As for food, that was so minimal it consisted of onion skins boiled in water and little else. The prisoners ate the grass until the field became a desert. They gnawed the bones of dead animals who had strayed into the camp and been killed; dogs, cats, rats, pigeons brought down with catapults, it didn’t matter what they were as long as they had a little flesh on them. Fighting over scraps was rife, though the weakness of the combatants meant they were half-hearted affairs. When winter came they died in their thousands and were flung into mass graves. How he had survived Alex did not know.

The Germans needed workers to feed their great war machine and who better to supply them than their prisoners? Towards the end of 1942, they were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was triangular in layout, with a three-metre-high perimeter wall within which was a path patrolled by guards and dogs and inside that an electric fence. Barrack huts lay beyond the roll-call area and these had tiered bunk beds, though they were so overcrowded, the beds were pushed together so that three and sometimes four shared beds intended for two. A factory had been built just outside the camp, in which the prisoners were expected to work for the German war effort. Refusing to work was not an option, but few would have done so because workers were fed – not generously, but enough to keep them working and alive. But for some it was too late. Friendships made were often broken by death.

Iosef had been singled out for the gas chamber almost as soon as they arrived. He was mentally deficient and therefore even more reviled than the ordinary Russians, who, as Slavs, were considered like the Jews to be Untermensch: subhuman. Alex, who could do nothing to save him, had mourned his passing.

Because he spoke excellent German, he was often asked to translate the official pronouncements of the camp commandant, and as few Germans knew any Russian, he was able to put whatever interpretation he liked on his words, warning his listeners of new edicts and suggesting ways that the sick could be saved from being carted off. If you were not well enough to work, you were not worth your rations.

Although skeletal, he did not quite become the numbed, unthinking automaton that many of them did and would often lie in his bunk listening to the quarrelsome words of his fellow prisoners and dream of better times. It was then he would conjure up a picture of Lydia in his mind’s eye. His filthy unsanitary surroundings faded and he was in an orchard with apple blossom all around him and a blue sky above. The voices of those around him faded and he heard laughter. Lydia’s laughter – light, carefree, mischievous.

Had she got safely back to England? Had she been given a hard time by the Foreign Office? Had she gone back to work? Was she in London or at Upstone Hall? Sometimes he liked to imagine her in a printed cotton frock, sitting on the swing Sir Edward had made for her in the garden at Upstone, with the sun shining on her hair and daffodils in the grass at her feet. Sometimes she would be in a lavish ball gown, dancing with him on the terrace to the music of a waltz, the Kirilov Star glittering at her throat. He had hated having to send her away without her child. Her misery over the loss of Yuri had torn his heart to shreds. He had done his best to be cheerful and optimistic for her sake, but as soon as he was alone, his despair had overtaken him and he had wept, knowing, as he handed her over to Robert Conway, that he would almost certainly lose her. Now, weakened and unsure if he was meant to survive, he tried only to think of the happier times and wish her well.

The rumours they were hearing reminded him of the previous year when they had told of the Western Allies’ invasion of France. Not even their captors, who refused to admit defeat was possible, had been able to go on denying the truth for long and they had maintained the enemy would soon be driven back into the sea. How long would they take to come clean about this latest piece of news? Hearing the whispers, they instructed Alex to tell the prisoners that what they were hearing were German guns firing on Allied bombers and the flames they could see in the distance were planes that had been shot down and exploded. Some believed it, some didn’t.

Your category as a prisoner influenced your reaction. Dressed in the rough striped uniform of a prisoner, each wore a patch which indicated their group: yellow for Jews, red for Communists, black for Gypsies and anti-social elements, green for common criminals, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, who called themselves ‘Bible Students’, and pink for homosexuals. Alex’s patch was red. It had afforded him some wry amusement in the beginning, but he knew it would be a death sentence if the Russians reached them first.

Now, four years after being taken captive, his thoughts were turning to freedom. But how to obtain it? How near were the Russians? How far away were the Western Allies? What plans had their captors made should they come under attack? Would they resist or retreat? What would they do with the prisoners? At the far end of the camp they had built a crematorium to dispose of the thousands who died, but no one was in any doubt that it also contained gas chambers where those who were too weak to work were disposed of. Would they all be herded in there? His questions were echoed by everyone else and no amount of shouting and beating could stop the prisoners talking.

Alex began to make plans to escape, which he told no one. It would have to be done on the march from the camp to the factory, the only time they went outside the gates. Being spring, they went in daylight, but when they returned at the end of the day’s shift it was growing dark. He decided to make the attempt on the return journey at a particular spot where there was a hedge overhanging a ditch. If he could roll into that without being seen by the guards who accompanied them, he might not be missed until roll-call when the column arrived in the camp. It would give him a few minutes, no more, to get away. He began to hoard a little of his food each day.

His plans were thwarted because production in the factory suddenly stopped and they ceased to be taken out of the camp. It was a sure sign the Germans were expecting the worst. Lorries drove up and down the roads, taking the machinery and the German workers further west, and clouds of smoke in the factory yard indicated papers being burnt. No one told the prisoners what was to become of them. And their already starvation rations were cut.

The Jews had been rounded up some time before and driven away in trucks, no one knew where. Towards the end of April, the criminals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the homosexuals were marched out escorted by guards. Alex learnt later that as soon as they were a few miles from the camp, their guards had returned to camp, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. How many of them survived, Alex never knew. It left only the political prisoners and the Russian POWs still in camp. This caused more than a little consternation. They were going to be handed over to the advancing Russians. A few saw it as a good thing, their belief in Bolshevism so firm they could not envisage anything but joy and a return to their homes and loved ones. Most, including Alex, were more realistic.

Those that were left were rounded up, lined up in batches and herded out of the gates like cattle. At first Alex thought they might be going west, away from the advancing Russians, and he was content to go along with that, but after a time it became apparent they were going north. What their captors had in mind he had no idea, but his mind was intent on reaching the Allies. They had not been going for long when the weaker among them began to drop like flies and were shot on the spot or left to die by the roadside. Could he fake collapse and be abandoned? But how could he be certain one of the guards would not put a bullet in him to make sure?

As they shuffled along incredibly slowly, they met civilians trudging along the road in the opposite direction, preferring to be taken by the Western Allies than the Russians. When, at midday, they were allowed to stop and rest by the wayside and eat the crust of bread with which they had been provided, he spoke to one of the women trudging southwards. ‘Gnädige Frau, what news is there?’

He had at first thought she was in her forties, but when she came closer to answer him, he realised she was at least ten years younger than that. She was thin as a rake and her hair, which had once been dark, was streaked with white. ‘Are you German?’ she asked.

‘No. English.’

‘Ein Engländer! How did you come to be with this lot?’ She nodded at the column of men in their striped camp uniforms.

‘I was attached to the Red Army when I was captured. They took me for a Russian. How far away are they?’

‘The Reds? No more than a few kilometres. Where are they taking you?’

‘I don’t know, but I don’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians.’

‘Why not, if you are English?’

‘I can’t prove it and the Communists would arrest me for a spy. Can you help me?’

‘Why should I?’

‘No particular reason. On the grounds of common humanity, if you like. On the other hand I might be able to help you when the time comes.’

She stood looking at him with her head on one side, turning over his request. If the Germans lost the war, it would make sense for her to have helped an Englishman, a sort of insurance policy. Not that they would lose; the Führer had promised them they would drive the invaders out and be victorious. ‘I wouldn’t help a Russian,’ she said. ‘I’d spit on him. You are sure you’re not Russian?’

He smiled crookedly, better not admit his origins. ‘No, I am not Russian.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

He looked round him. Their guards were sitting on the side of the road, eating bread and cheese and swilling it down with beer while their charges stood or squatted waiting for the signal to resume the march. ‘Find me some civilian clothes. I’ll get nowhere dressed like this. I can’t pay you, not until after the war, but I will do it then.’

She didn’t ask him how that was to be achieved. ‘You want them brought to you?’